Applications and/or tools used to provide and/or enable a user to navigate a file system user interface displayed at a client device (e.g., user applications, such as content creation applications, finders, browsers, etc.) typically interact with the file system to obtain the information required to be displayed. In response to certain user actions, e.g., opening a folder, dragging and drop a folder onto the user's “desktop” or other area associated with copying a file to local storage, etc., the application or tool may be configured to anticipate a future user action and to pre-fetch from the file system the information that may be required to respond to the anticipated action, if the user were to perform the action. For example, if a folder is dragged and dropped onto the user's desktop, the user may be expected to open the folder (e.g., double click on it) to view the contents. As a result, the application or tool that displayed the file system information via a browse or other navigation interface may be configured to pre-fetch the folder contents information from the file system, to be ready to display that information in response to the folder being opened.
In the case of a distributed file system, the file system metadata typically is accessed from a remote file system metadata server. One or more remote procedure calls or other requests may be required to pre-fetch file system information. In addition, the application/tool used to display the file system information may not be configured to obtain the information directly from the file system metadata server. Instead, a file system client or agent at the client device may act as an intermediary. As a result, potentially unnecessary pre-fetch actions by applications or tools used to display file system information may result in undesired use of both client device and network resources, and could result in undesired latency.